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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25116931">let me count the ways</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoStringsOnMe/pseuds/NoStringsOnMe'>NoStringsOnMe</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Black Family Drama (Harry Potter), Character Study, Cousin Incest, First War with Voldemort, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Multi, POV Narcissa Black Malfoy, Polyamory</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:29:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,371</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25116931</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoStringsOnMe/pseuds/NoStringsOnMe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Narcissa Black does not say ‘I love you’ very often. It’s just not in her nature.</em>
</p>
<p>|| There is more than one way to say ‘I love you’. Oh, let me count the ways.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James Potter/Lily Evans/Narcissa Black/Remus Lupin/Sirius Black</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>let me count the ways</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for <a href="https://rarehpbingo.tumblr.com/">rarehpbingo</a> | prompt: 'i love you'</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Narcissa Black does not </span>
  <em>
    <span>say </span>
  </em>
  <span>‘I love you’ very often. It’s just not in her nature. Sirius would argue it was her upbringing. Cygnus and Druella had never been forthcoming in their affection, not when the weight of Pureblood society held them down. She was to be their heir, the one to lead the next generation of Blacks in power and glory. They weren’t interested in her feelings, her emotions, the raging tumult of her mind that said she wasn’t being true to herself. So, she learned how to say ‘I love you’ through desperate action. Or she thought she did, for approval is not the same as love. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When she traded being the sole male heir for being a third daughter, Narcissa realised she had been saying ‘I love you’ all wrong. It didn’t matter what she did. It was never enough. Not for them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It had almost been enough for Sirius.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Come away with me,” he had said, tugging on her hands with desperate eyes and bitten lips that had looked impossibly red in the half-light of her bedroom. “Come away with me and you’ll only ever be who you are, not what they want you to be. Cissa, </span>
  <em>
    <span>please</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He had pleaded and begged and told her he loved her in all the ways he knew how, but still, she sent him away. The love she bore her parents, her family, held her down - kept her in place. She would </span>
  <em>
    <span>make</span>
  </em>
  <span> them love her. She would make them proud. She would restore the reputation to the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black. Or so she told herself. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On the eve of her wedding, Narcissa runs. She’s been saying ‘I love you’ wrong for years. It’s been an ashen lie in her mouth. There is no life for her as a voiceless trophy wife. She runs to Remus because she can't run to Sirius. There is no way to say 'I love you' to him that won't end in a screaming match. So, she stands, sodden in the rain before tired eyes and begs for a new life.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That night is the first time she says ‘I love you’ and it doesn’t hurt. She says ‘I love you’ by softening her hard edges and pouring out her grievances over hot, sweet tea, Remus’ hand stroking the creases from her body as he holds her close. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’ll be okay,” he whispers into her hair, and it sounds an awful lot like, ‘I love you”, even to Cissa’s untrained ear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Sirius appears on the morning that was to be her wedding, he is a tempest. He rages and roars and snarls. His hands reach as if to choke and tear but come up with air when she dances out of his grasp with a tinkling laugh that cuts deeper than knives. Betrayal. Broken trust. Promises forgotten and discarded. All this and more, Sirius throws to her feet. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You chose them!” he bellows.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“When you could have had me,” he whispers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s an ‘I love you’ by any other name.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Their storm only builds and Cissa screams ‘I love you, I love you, I love you’ over and over again, howling into the wind because Sirius fucking Black is the only person who can understand what it is she has run from. And he expects her to go back to it. He taunts her. He dares her. She almost expects to turn tail and run. There’s still time. She could make the church if she tried. But she doesn’t. Narcissa Black stands strong and true before him, demanding to be seen - to be believed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m done with that life. I don’t want it,” she says, and her voice doesn’t even waver. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Narcissa watches Remus send Sirius back into the waiting arms of James and Lily with a chaste kiss. She watches the way Remus’ hands linger on Sirius’ wrists and the way in which his tired eyes soften for this burning, boiling man who’d sooner spit venom than let himself be pliant in her presence. Narcissa decides then and there that she likes the way Remus Lupin says ‘I love you’, and vows to learn to do the same.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Next, come James and Lily; a pair, a beautiful unit, two halves of the same whole. Except, when Lily stands before her, green eyes watery and gentle hands already tugging her into a warm, long-awaited embrace, Narcissa knows that Lily would gladly be a fifth if it meant they could all exist together. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lily dares to say it out loud. She holds Cissa’s hands and frowns at the floor, looking so creased and sad that Cissa fears she might break just at the sight.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I never truly stopped loving you,” Lily says and with that, it feels like they’re transported back to a snowy cabin in the woods where they had said what they thought were their last goodbyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Give it time,” Lily says, brushing her thumb across Cissa’s cheek. “They’ll come around.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>James stands across the room, braced against the fireplace and there is no ‘I love you’ in his eyes for her. But there is for Lily. He doesn’t trust her, not with his beloved. And won’t, for a long time to come.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She knows she must earn his love.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Slowly, Narcissa learns to say ‘I love you’ without desperation. In the aftermath of a full moon, when he’s feeling broken and small, she takes Remus by the shoulders and lavishes him with fearsome praise until he smiles. She lets Lily take her by the hand and show her all her funny muggle pictures that don’t move. Then, when she insists that Cissa makes toast for the first time, she’s only a </span>
  <em>
    <span>little</span>
  </em>
  <span> peeved when she gets a fright from the unexpected pop. Slowly, Narcissa learns to say ‘I love you’ because she wants to. Not because she has to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>From the shadows, James and Sirius watch her learn with folded arms and stormy eyes. When she’s near, they’re defensive, coiled, ready to pounce. They’re always on the lookout for the first signs that she’s about to go back on her word. But she never does. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There is no right way to love someone, but there are many wrong ways, this, Narcissa knows. And none so many ways as when she’s loving Sirius Black. They have the same howling fight again and again. They scream until their throats are raw, until they have wounded the other so completely that only the smallest, most pitiful parts of themselves are left. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He was being a git. We want you here,” James Potter tells her, quietly, an uneasy frown pinching his features.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Even you?” she snaps, licking her wounds and half-feral with grief.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Instead of answering, he presses his lips into a tight line, brow furrowing further. Instead of answering, he places a mug of hot, sweet tea at her elbow, nods, and leaves her to her ruminations. It is the first time he tells her, ‘I love you’.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a tentative truce. And in time, Narcissa learns to love James and shows him how to love her in return. She says ‘I love you’ with fumbling explanations of </span>
  <em>
    <span>why</span>
  </em>
  <span> she and Sirius fight, of her anxieties and fears, of a childhood that said she’d never been enough - because when James finally starts to listen to her, he listens to it all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Everything you just told me. Tell </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he says, arms folded, jaw set as he forces Sirius to sit next to her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s his sweetest, most hard-edged ‘I love you’ yet.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He leaves them and now Narcissa must try to make sense of her love, explain it, to the one person who has seen her blackest parts. Narcissa cracks herself open on Sirius’s sharp edges and lays out her love. He takes her hands and together they peel away all his fortifications.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They say, “Please don’t leave.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They say, “Don’t go where I cannot follow.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They say, “Don’t let me be the worst parts of myself.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They say, ‘I love you.’</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And for now, it’s enough.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Narcissa Black doesn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>say</span>
  </em>
  <span> ‘I love you’ very often. It’s just not in her nature. But she’s learning, and it gets easier every day.</span>
</p>
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